Amazon isn't going to take the iPad mini lying down, going on the offensive with a direct comparison between its $199 Kindle Fire HD and Apple's latest $329 media darling -- and they're taking the fight to their website homepage.

Ever wonder how Amazon can price its Kindle and Kindle Fire tablets and e-readers so amazingly cheap? The e-tailer hasn't found any secret sauce -- its CEO finally confesses that they're just selling them at cost.

To paraphrase Robert Duvall in the 1979 classic Apocalypse Now: “We love the smell of Kindle Fire in the morning.” Yes, Amazon’s seven-inch tablet is real, and it’s cheaper than even the analysts had predicted -- and its arrival has further pushed down the price of the standard Kindle, which is now a mere $79.

If the rumors are to be believed, Amazon will step into the tablet fray on Wednesday with something called the “Kindle Fire” -- a customized Android slate which may pose the first real threat to Apple’s dominance with the iPad, thanks to the ecosystem the e-tailer has built for apps, movies, TV shows, books and music.

Gizmodo's reporting that Amazon's probably, maybe, announcing something new September 28. Look, we've got some time until this purported Apple event in October, so we might as well turn our speculation elsewhere for the time being. Like the rest of the internet technology blogs, we're betting that it's a fabulous new Amazon tablet. And it will probably run Android. Because everything that anyone ever makes anymore seems to run Android.